Bridge: An Environmental Memoir
by Jessica Wheeler

Dreams and Beginnings

The tent is dank and musty and the mildew clings in decorative blotches to the fading vinyl. I hear the rustling of something small outside my window. I reach over, grab my pen light and shine it through the screen. An armadillo snuffs around in the dry grass, creating swirling patterns of grub-eating splendor. I watch as it wanders away and am compelled to follow. I unzip the tent and begin walking. Before I know it I am running, the cat briars ripping at my waking legs. I have forgotten about the armadillos. I run with intent and a purpose unknown even to me, following a path that was shown to me the day before. I turn after the big pine, dip down once, pass the fallen cabbage palm and run to the Myakka.

But the river is dry. The moss laden trees dip invitingly downward to where, at one point, water stood.

I scramble down the eroded limestone bank into her exposed gut. I am surrounded by the exquisite tracks of Florida creatures. The track of the armadillo, its armor dragged ungracefully through the mud; the coyote's elongate print, only two nails showing themselves in each step; the foxes' miniature dog prints, stamped lightly in the mud; the bobcat's prints cast in grace and power with only pads showing, the nails held modestly within the paw. I stand amazed; all of the tracks were perfectly preserved and recognizable. Suddenly I see a track that stands out from the rest; it is a print I have not seen before. The main pad is like an inflated and upside-down W, four circular pads radiating from the W's curves. There are no nail prints. A chill runs up my spine as I stand in the darkness and contemplate the Florida Panther. Her scream echoes in my mind.

I awake with a start.

The next day, while wandering, we come across a dried streamy area. I stop with the eerie feeling of de ja vu. The prints of Florida creatures are cast about me, though not in the perfection of my dream and, of course, the sloppy prints of boars churn many to oblivion. I search in frantic remembrance for the Florida panther's print. It is not visible but I feel I have been spoken to in spirit.

I think back.

So many tracks in my life, the tracks of creatures followed stealthily through marsh and bog and mud. The tracks of tractors torn through the wild. The maintained tracks of men scarring the earth's face and screaming in asphalt agony. So many tracks. But only one on and off my Sanibel. And this is where it all begins.

My life begins in Florida . My life has been Florida . Of course, there were other lives that came before, but they are nothing but odd accumulations of colors and emotions and snippets of dresses and grandmotherly smells.

My first memory is green. Not just in sight but in nature and essence. The memory is green. A deep emerald green. My hand is enveloped in warmth and strength. A little upward pressure and my father helps me jump from rock to rock in a sea of green.

And then I remember emotion. A joy, a surge, a feeling still with me today - happiness. I hear the crunch of gravel, I hear the door slam - I know this ritual . I run downstairs and outside. My stubby feet carry me under the grape arbor and into my dad's arms. He crouches at my level. He smells of oil paint and sweat. You're so strong!, he yells and he pretends my force is far too strong and topples over backwards, holding me in the air. I scream with glee. My memory is happiness.

But my life begins here, in the warm wet embrace of Southwest Florida . A little island that rests in estuary and swamp and sunlight and mosquito drone.

Clyde-Butcher-cabbage-palms shoot their black stalks and silhouetted fronds into the deep blue of a winter sky. Here and there "high" ground can be spotted where gumbo limbos and buttonwoods crowd one another in a slow motion game of king of the hill. They are surrounded by a sea of saw grasses and, every once and a while, where the land dips into swale, ferns create a waving green ocean bathed in cool sunlight. These things were my home. Florida is who I am. She shapes me and molds me and envelops me in the things that make her beautiful. She makes me beautiful. And, really, who could ask for more than the drone of harmless insects, the gurgle of a half-submerged moorhen, the almost-living crunch of leaves below one's feet? The light-filled emergent sea grape leaves, most closely resembling crumpled blown glass, are more phantasmagorical than the most surreal art. And when they grew, and died, and fell, lying in their embracing dryness was nothing less than pure rapture. Who could ask for more than horizon to horizon blue, flocks of ibis, the squeal of Osprey? I could watch the nesting warbler and allow myself to think freely. A twitter or rustle were her only interruptions. The smell of sun-baked mud satisfied me in a way that only the solitude of the marsh could. The song of leather ferns and saw-grasses, the indistinguishable calls of frogs, alligators and birds mingle in my mind. It was here I could drag my feet through the tea-brown swamp and pretend to be entirely alone, no hum-drum of civilization waiting for my return over the horizon. It was here I could focus my mind on breathing and attempt to catch the rhythm of something greater than myself but so much simpler than an unfamiliar God. It is this place that I was and am still able to love with a portion of myself that I was never able to devote to anything before.

Lessons from a Chinese Finger Trap

A ditch, also known as the Sanibel River , holds alligators and turtles and gar and minnows and is lined with thirsty red mangroves, their roots shooting out over the river in brown rainbows speckled with snails, making it impassible to the uncreative human.

But lessons from the bobcat teach well of the joys of mangrove walking. I have seen her eyes gaze coolly at me as she uses the mangrove bridges and passes well above the gator's jaws. She twitches her long tail, mocking the unfamiliar tourists who claim to see panthers prowling this area. She is willing to let them believe she is far grander.

I take to the mangrove roots in a clumsily human manner. Once to the other side one must utilize the power to walk on water-mud, the foot placed flat and quickly moved. A moment's hesitation and you are stuck, the mud devouring waders and boots in a hellish manner with slurps and gurgles and chuckles at your absolute helplessness and inability to survive. I have seen the muck turn the most stoic into a hysterical and crumpled mass. This bog is the doldrums for those who can't see it as more. Florida swamp is a Chinese finger trap for the body and soul and you must make sure not to get hysterical. Remember to pull slowly, the more pressure you exert the more trapped you become. You have to tug lightly and have no fear or the mud will take you prisoner.

And all of Florida is like the mud. The more you fight against her the more she will become your worst enemy, the more hysterical you will become at your inability to escape. My family lives with her through all seasons. With our house I tucked back into her womb we hear every reverberation of her heart. If you walk past a series of swales and cross once over the river you will see the yellow of house, the green of shutters, the maroon of doors and the white of trim piercing into the wild. This is my home. Her windows will always be open, the mosquitoes whining, forever fruitless, against the life-saving screen. Laundry hangs behind the house, flowingly graceful and alive, utilizing the sun and wind. If one works with Florida she will be kind in return. She has much to offer.

Don't get me wrong, though. It's not a love that is constant or even recognizable to a foreigner. In fact, everyday is pledged as our last in the god-forsaken swamp that is best left for the blood-sucking monsters. Everyday we pledge our animosity more intensely and, each day, hopelessly falling, we find ourselves clinging more and more strongly to Florida 's evilly quirky intricacies.

But to me, it's hard not to get attached to the down-to-earth magnificence of creation. One learns to love the hugging humidity that lays heavy on the land; the warmly putrid water that fills the air with the rich smell of decay; the salt that clings with crystalline intensity on the waxen, slightly browning mangrove leaves; the lone fern enveloping its own reflection in the strangely still tannic water. Some would think that these simple beauties would be dwarfed to insignificance by a booming mountain-scape, a sculpted desert cliff, or an alpine forest. But somehow they speak naught of home and they do not invite me with love. They are picture perfect, but as with a picture, I cannot delve deeper.

What seems stranger to me then the odd relationship that has my family and I "stuck" are the people who won't accept Florida 's eccentricities. They draw their blinds against the sun and blast themselves with air conditioning and bug-sprays and disinfectants. But without the sun and heat and bugs, what is Florida ? Plastic flamingos, condominiums and a deep lack of identity.

I think back to my aunt's and cousin's visit. My cousin was about my age and we had been childhood friends. I was very often alone, though not lonely, and I was excited by the prospects of company.

They were to be given my room (a glassed in porch) to sleep in for several nights. I had cleaned it kindly and was excited to share the experience of watching the bamboo whisper into darkness and hearing the crickets and frogs serenade one another while the distant rumble of waves and wind through pines provided beat and harmony. I was excited to let someone else experience the sunrise on their face in the early morning hours; the sunlight interrupted only by the flutter of fronds and the passing flocks of ibis and pelicans. I imagined them falling asleep with the sweet smell of musty books and damp antiques sticking like candy in their nostrils. I was anticipating them waking in the morning to the smell of hot coffee which blended so well with the sometimes nauseating smell of swamp and decay. But these were the things that made life so beautiful. For weeks I thought of their visit. We rarely had company and my mind spun at the joy of sharing.

I remember them calling, telling us they were just entering Fort Myers . That was a far off and distant place into town and further, down long roads lined with buildings. The land over the bridge was a far-flung place and I rarely drifted there. I thought of their travel, first on highway, then large city roads and then over the bridge. It was a small quaint bridge that seemed to join the human and the natural. The water was so near that if you tilted your head the right way you couldn't see the bridge at all. Instead you seemed to be gliding over the contours of Pine Island Sound. The birds would veer shockingly close to the windows momentarily, perhaps gliding effortlessly on the wind created by the car's motion. The dolphins surfaced so close that their blowholes were clearly visible. It made me happy to think of people crossing it into the natural world, far from the chaos of the city. After the bridge they would travel the small paved roads which would then become dirt before narrowing to our shell driveway which twisted towards the house.

I waited calmly but my stomach turned. I heard the roar of tires before their arrival. Life here was quiet and these senses were in tune. My dog barked and bristled. The crunch of gravel (which indicated they were close to the bend by the pine) sent my feet running and I carried myself lightly down the stairs. The car was visible through the trees now and I wanted to dance. The sun kissed my neck in ecstasy. I could share this, too.

They parked and I ran with arms outstretched. We didn't know each other well, but I felt love for them because they were family. My aunt embraced me with ritual and I didn't feel warm. My cousin seemed to giggle at my lack of dignity. Later my parents would tell me that one of the reasons they moved so far from home is because Yankee hospitality isn't gracious. Dogs ate dogs and they watched their back and mouth or something like that. It didn't sound like fun and I watched an egret soar in pterodactyl similarities over the roof of my house.

I showed them my room. My aunt sniffed the air coolly. I wondered if the smell of old books made her happy. We ate cheese dip and talked about friends of family. I fidgeted in the rocking chair in the corner and contemplated the shine of the sun on our carpet which caught dust particles and light-drenched faeries on its way down from the window. The particles danced like druids when the fans caught them and spit them out. My aunt's pig-like face shone red, even though we had set up some room fans to assist the ceiling ones in creating a cross ventilation. My parents didn't consider air conditioning an option, we all felt nauseous when we spent time in closed up places. My cousin tied back her sweaty hair and wiped the orange-tinted beads of make-up sweat from her brow. Wine and bread and dinner and gossip. My cousin said she was too old to climb trees. I filled my nose with smells and tried to keep my mouth full of food so I wouldn't have to talk. I knew my voice would crack with disappointment.

When I awoke the next morning, my back stuck to the mildewing leather couch, I let the smell of coffee and muck fill my waking mind with dreams of swamp and breakfast. I listened to hear the first rustle of my aunt waking. I could imagine the sun on her face and thought that this would make the whole ordeal worthwhile, that sun could make even the bitterest Yankee contemplate beauty. No rustle. I waited. I heard my parents whispering and dressing in their room. I loved hearing their voices. Still no rustle.

Finally I rose and padded to the door. I pushed it open with my finger and peaked in. It was empty. I was confused. I ran and knocked on my parents' door. My mother came and opened it; she said I could come in. I did and propped myself on the edge of the bed, telling them that my aunt was gone. "She said she was hot and couldn't sleep and wanted to know if the frogs ever shut up," my dad muttered with a cynical chuckle. I was disappointed. He knew. He always did. I have something to show you, he said, his eyes twinkling ferociously. I was beginning to understand that a concept of heaven was different for everyone. I smiled and was grateful to have at least one person to share mine with. Later he brought me out to the muddy area by the chicken pen where we looked at bobcat prints and imagined their gleaming eyes through the brush.

I went back to my room silently and sat on my mussed up bed. It smelled of a foreign B.O. and the bamboo squeaked on tin and told me to cheer up. I suppose this Florida is my secret and I can walk on mud and she will never bring me down. My aunt had sunk and Florida laughed in approval. I couldn't help but think that walking on mud was more fun to do alone anyway.

And I did. I walked on mud for twelve years. Surrounded by beauty and the loud and intricate silence of nature I was alone with my family in mind and body.

Growing Up

Sanibel was always just a little bit off. When I began attending school in town I learned all of the kids who had attended the Sanibel School were a bit off too. We learned, much to our surprise and dismay, that not all schools were dismissed for the day because the gases wafting in from the surrounding swamp were too intense to hold class. Most students didn't trudge through flooded outdoor halls, and most students weren't made into "Junior Naturalists" where they spent a semester studying Rachel Carson, Ospreys, and leading tours through "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge. It took a long time for me to realize just how special this education had been. Looking back on it, I realize just how much the Florida environment influenced our games.

Lizards

I remember my first time. Perhaps it was almost a right of passage at my elementary school, but almost everyone hung the snapping anoles from their ear lobe at some point in their life. At any rate, very few kids left without the experience of having reptiles as accessories. The start of that morning was like any other. I walked through a corner of the then-recently-restored Johnston preserve - a forest of sweet-weedy smelling grandfather's beard. I tromped through someone's backyard, wondering what would be in store for me today at the bus-stop. The kids there were several years older and, in my eyes, incredibly cool. My parents hated them and I knew, somewhere at the back of my preoccupied mind, that I didn't really need to hold them as role models. As I walked I wondered if it would be as other days, extreme tests of willpower and strength dominating the morning. Spraying each other in the eyes with super-soakers, climbing trees and playing with bugs, I would stand my ground and wait my turn, determined to be as tough as the guys. Today as I walked up things looked relatively reserved. I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I saw the smirks that played on their faces as my round and naïve face showed itself through the bushes. I stepped closer and saw. The oldest of the group had two anoles hanging from his earlobes. I tried to hide any fear or shock I felt. I was in the first grade and was a fresh Yankee, straight from Connecticut and they knew it. Ryan laughed. The little reptiles twitched. They were both brown anoles which, I would learn in a later science class, were exotic. One of them was relatively small, its head was a shade of copper and stripes ran from its head to its tail. The other one was larger and a uniform beige. It was the one that intimidated me. It was a little dinosaur and I was sure of it. It had three ridges running down its back. One ridge rose from its flat, reptilian forehead and ended at the back of its neck. The next ran the length of its body and the last followed the curve of its tail. The kids looked at me. I knew that my turn had come. He reached up to his ear and pulled them off. He handed them to me. Looking back on it, in an odd blur of real memory, remembered memory and a bit of exaggeration, I envision some sort of stare down resembling that famous scene from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly . I recollect staring at him in a slow-motion and disjointed time continuum passing to the tune of whistling western music and the clanking of spurs. If I really wanted to put an edge on this memory I could probably cause myself to remember my seven year old lips sneering before spitting into the weeds by the side of the road and my little blue eyes squinting into the sun in a manner that would make Clint Eastwood cringe.

In all reality, I took those squirming, biting, cold bodied lizards and clamped one to each ear. I was now truly a Floridian.

Cabbage Palms

There was a palm being devoured by a strangler fig in front of my home. The neighbors and I would climb the laced root-branches of the strangler to get to the top of the topless cabbage palm. Its decaying stump made a perfect high-up throne from which we were able to survey the neighborhood. My neighbor would pretend to be Xena. I would pretend to be Xena when she wasn't there.

The cabbage palms left neat little holes when they decomposed completely. A little bit of extra digging left a nice divot that I called a man-hole. I covered the knee-deep hole with palm fronds like I had seen the cannibals do in some old black-and-white movie. I trapped my first grade crush in that hole, and though only his foot fell in, I had caught myself a man.

The berries of the cabbage palm grew in clumps on little twig-like appendages that, when the coons had cleaned them off, resembled an old-fashioned broom. Brooms, in my play, served several purposes. The first was as, well, a broom. Playing house we swept the sand of the playground with all the love we could muster. The second was a game I found more exciting. Placing the branch between my legs I could jump off stuff and pretend to be a witch, running this way and that with the intent to fly away.

Bananas

"That's why they call me Paul 'Banana Man' Wheeler," my dad would chuckle. "No daddy," I would insist seriously, "that is not your middle name!" He would laugh. In all honesty, looking back on it, he deserved the middle name banana man. He had, I believe, forty-five species of banana, on our acre and a half banana plantation. He cared for them all like children. That period of my life was filled with bananas. Dried banana, banana bread, banana muffins, fresh banana. The bananas were purple and red and sometimes yellow and were always far smaller and not quite the shape of store-bought bananas.

Imagine the majestic banana, its green pseudostem shooting from the top of the tree and hanging about halfway down its length. From this stem the half-developed, green bananas were arranged in symmetrical circles (or a "head" of bananas). This pseudostem ended in an unearthly grouping of purple, fleshy "petals"(which are actually modified leaves called bracts) which hung down like an upside-down dew drop of enormous proportions. Each bract was curved into a bowl; the outside a deep purple with strong, straight veins running down its length. The inside was smoother and of a lighter pinkish-purple hue. As the "flower" opened, a world of smaller, white flowers was born between each of the layers. When I was younger, I would place the bracts on my head and the heads of all visitors as a sort of tropical yarmulke.

Later, I discovered the delectable nectar. If you were able to shoo away the bees that gathered, you could steal the nectar and drink it yourself, a treat I began to prefer to the over-eaten banana. I would try to collect it in banana yarmulke and feed it to friends when they came over. Besides the joys of the banana tree itself (whose sap dyed my clothes unwillingly and who's grassy, fibrous outer layer made funny, makeshift headdresses) the dense plantation made nice hiding spots for urinating in the woods, something I and all my friends did to make more time for playing and keeping us from having to go in doors where we may be chided to wash our hands or eat some lunch.

Cocoanut Palms

My parents were always fans of Winslow Homer, and I was often inspired by the vivid watercolors depicting native children climbing to the tops of leaning cocoanut palms to collect the nuts. Before I moved to Florida , I would draw the palms often, always with an extremely curving trunk, the top laden with every type of fruit that didn't grow in Connecticut . It held cocoanuts and bananas and other make-believe purple and orange fruits. When I got to Florida I wanted to climb the tree and get the nuts, like I had seen in all the pictures. I tried, squeezing my bare monkey feet into the horizons of the trunk, but never really getting higher than a couple of feet. Regardless of the fact that I couldn't pluck them directly from the tree, I developed a devotion to the delicatessen of cocoanut meat. I would bring the nuts upstairs, begging my dad to pry off the husk with two shovels or a machete. He often did, and we would feast on the meat until we felt our stomachs grow taught. My dog would rip at the husks as his favorite toy.

Mahoe

The mahoe tree isn't a native, but it thrives in the Florida climate. Not caring or understanding much of this "some plants are good and others aren't" stuff, the first portion of my life was spent high in my mahoe, whose horizontally spreading branches provided walkable surfaces. Up there in those branches I would transform into an Indian. Grabbing sticks that I would later sharpen into arrows and carving innumerable symbols into the sensitive bark of the emerging branches I looked down on my "territory" with glee. But the thing I found most fascinating about the mahoe were its flowers. They would be yellow when on the tree but would turn red and drop to the ground later in the season. The stigma of the flower was a deep red that, when plucked from the center, served as a perfect face-paint complete with applicator. The petals could be crushed up with my mom's potato masher. Running through the yard, smeared in purple flower, I patted my hand on my mouth and chased my chickens as they squawked and hopped through their sandy yard.

The mahoe dye and flowers, when mixed perfectly with a little bit of dark muck, also made an intensely real-looking bruise. Throwing some water into my eyes, conjuring up a frown, and knotting my brow I would run up the stairs to my mother, showing her my bruise, telling her I fell from the tree. Though it may have worked well the first time, every time after that I believe she just played along for my own sick satisfaction, rushing me into the bathroom to clean it up, while I laughed as the whole bruise washed off under the water.

Lead Tree

Another exotic, which I enjoyed despite the fact, was the lead tree. Its flattened seed pods gave me and my classmates hours of enjoyment. The tree hung over the fence which separated my school from the National Wildlife Refuge that surrounded us on all sides. We would run over there when recess started, the teachers yelling to us not to go through the gate (which we later illegally discovered led to a dock over a river). I suppose the best way to describe our play with the pods would be to compare it to Lincoln Logs. The seed pods could be stacked alternatingly, creating buildings, then towns, then worlds. The roofs could be made out of grass, palm, or left open topped so we could look inside. We often caught lizards to exist as the inhabitants of our worlds, and if this didn't work, our hands created perfect figurines for make-believe play.

Ant Lions

Once that section of the field was made off limits (sometime after a gator found its way into the recreation center pool and parents and teachers decided that it would be a good idea to keep a closer eye on the kids by confining them to the playground) we had to find new ways to entertain ourselves. Sometimes we would sit outside a hole under the slide-tower that led to a legendary coral snake nest, just daring each other to travel inside. Once that became boring, especially since no one would go in, we found a game that led to the death of ants instead of our own. We began to capture ant lions, more commonly known to us as doodlebugs. We would find their funnel-shaped impressions in the playground sand, scooping downward a little ways to find the little round gray larvae. We would put them in a left-over bottle from some drink we had saved enough money to buy from the looming vending machines. Adding sand, we would watch them work. Sometimes they would die. Sometimes they wouldn't and all we had to do was add ants, whose tiny feet would scramble at the side of the sandy funnel, never making any progress, eventually falling downward to the invisible doodle bug. Looking back on it, I am vaguely reminded of the Roman circuses, the ants acting as a sacrifice to the lions, and many, many children as onlookers to the slaughter.

Ring Neck Snakes

This was how I impressed my friends as a child. I knew, from the colorful pages of my much poured over Florida's Fabulous Reptiles book, that ring neck snakes were harmless. I would watch them move magically through the grass, their pencil-sized bodies shining black and fantastic in the Florida sun. The orange-red ring around their neck was a beautiful shade, but it didn't compare to the intensity of the color under their tail. As I picked one up, its first attempt would be to shoot out of my hand but, finding that it traveled from one hand to the other fruitlessly, it would wind around one of my fingers and twist its tail into a spiral of white to pale orange to bright red - a shock to any animal who wasn't a child. I would let it swirl between my fingers and finally find its way to the ground. My friends would look on with awe as I pressured them into trying. Many of them did, though I made my baby sister cry when trying to make her do it (I didn't want her to be a softy, she too had to make a right of passage into Florida adult-hood, especially as a native, a standing I would never achieve.)

I made it through elementary school, middle school and most of high school before hitting any kind of truly traumatic event. But when it rains it pours. During the summer of super storms, it poured in a more than metaphorical manner.

Hopelessness

Exactly one year after Hurricane Charlie it was time to go to college. We drove in the car, all of my belongings crying in home sickness. I ignored my home. I was ready to slip out of my ruts. I felt that overwhelming feeling of anticipation. Anticipation of what I was not positive, though I had an inkling it traced back to a year ago today when the downward spiral which had become an object for hourly contemplation began. My thoughts rushed and my adrenaline pumped. That sinking feeling is always accompanied that lump that only the most stoic could control. I never could. I swallowed hard and my mind swirled and clouded. Was social interaction this hard for everyone? Did they walk around with a constant fear of contact? All the confidence I was once minorly famous for had long since vanished. It didn't take much to make my mind turn within itself. Since that time I had been able to prevent the memories from creeping into consciousness and spoiling the present. I had avoided the smells and sounds which even so much as began to bring the memories back. But I had to face it now, as I left it behind. The bare truths: Sanibel had been crushed and defeated. My home had been hurt and we had been barred from accessing her wounds. The bridge which acted as this bond between human and natural excluded me from the side on which I longed to be. When we returned, nearly a week later, we found sections of our roof missing and our house sodden and pathetic. The damage to the yard was incomprehensible. Two weeks of my life seem to have disappeared from my memory. I know that we man-handled our yard - two acres of downed trees and a family of four to heal it. With two weeks of work and enough brush to fill four semis we regained something which didn't even resemble what we had started with. But I don't remember, can't remember doing it. I have blocked these memories from my conscious. They are an unnecessary pain. Sanibel had been crushed and so had I. Shell-shocked. Traumatized. It was then I came to understand the true meaning of loss and physical labor. In those days I was nothing more than traumatized by the concept that, in less than two hours, eleven years worth of work could be erased. We had started with a lot of nothing, made a beautiful something, and an unpredictable force had taken it from us permanently. It was then that I came to understand the extreme and searing psychological pain that comes with dealing with what one has only heard of. The artwork that I had so lovingly created with my own two hands in times of peace, tranquility and inner reflection lay raped and mangled, some distorted representation of my current emotion. The mildew coated their surfaces devouring something so much more than the paper they existed on. As I lay all I had in the sun, I couldn't help but convulse on my own dry tears and cough on my own self-pity. God, how I hated this place! It is beyond comprehension how something inanimate can cause such a reaction. I, who claimed to be an avid lover of nature in all its glory, hated its nature. The trees were wet and sensual and uninvited as they crept across my flesh. My woods had been wounded as much as I had, but I didn't return to help them heal. I was angry and betrayed. I felt life slipping between my fingers and, helplessly, I couldn't figure out how to cup my hands.

Hopefulness

And yes, I left my home with these thoughts in mind. I longed to be reclusive at school yet I had no woods where I could carry out this desire. I was, in some ways for the first time in my life, lonely. And yet I was never alone.

I awoke one morning, my mouth full of my own dream-tears. The sun had not yet risen and I ran outside. My feet carried me unthinking and unknowing to the bay where I sat on my haunches and looked, unseeing, over the water. I felt empty and was unsure why. Then I saw white in the distance. Egrets? When I saw what it was I realized how badly I longed for home and my woods. I wanted to whisper to the world about the gleam of water and sun and the white pelicans hovering in unison above me; about the tears of joy the strangled me kindly as I stared at the pelicans with undying admiration. And then more migrating birds - the homely teal who flew above me in a half-formed flock. I couldn't suppress the gurgle of laughter that rose in my throat as I watched - views like that brought me such joy. My heart swelled and faltered, my breath was taken away by the beauty of movement and the joy of life and rhythm. Hovering right there above me, they almost including me in their passion! I thought of their travel across the ever changing landscape, how the change in Florida 's seasons was best manifested in this way. Those moments were so right, so reminiscent, and so hopeful. I was alone and my front was cool but my back was heated by the love of the sun. The tree's sunrise-elongated shadows slowly swept across my face and caused my flesh to crawl with cold. I laughed as another flock became visible on the curving edge of Sarasota Bay , swooping downward, changing places, looking so cool and easy. I, in the first bout of sincere happiness I experienced since arriving at college, cried tears warmer than my face. The pelicans were near now, with wings so white they were almost blue. The tip of each wing was touched daintily by black, drawing an end to their magnificent wingspan. They hung, posed for me in crystal morning light while the wind bit at my chapped lips. It was just the sea, these birds, and me and somehow I was happier than I had been in so long.

And suddenly I knew.

I knew that as long as these angels humbled my upward gaze I would be happy. The world had been disrupted and I had been disturbed, but not all was lost. They still came back. And as long as they continued coming back each fall, lovingly twisting the waters surface I would be happy. I knew that one day I'd be able to look back fondly on the sadness and on my fear of humanity and realize my intimidation made love possible. White pelicans will forever carry hope for me. And home carries a new beauty and sanctuary, I had forgiven my love.

Death

My Aunt Anne died when I was ten. My fondest and perhaps clearest memory of her was when we went to collect newts in an icy stream behind her house in upstate New York . We put on rain boots and sloshed through water so cold it made our feet swell. We turned over stream-smoothed rocks in search of the elusive find. We never found a newt. But I liked the cool mud and the open forest which was foreign and inviting.

I remember hearing the news. My Aunt Joan left a message on our answering machine. "Paul, have you heard about Annie?" her incongruous northern accent pounded in our ear drums. That was the entire message. My father dialed Anne's number and tried to remain calm and light hearted though he seemed frantic. The wrinkles under his eyes looked puffy. She had been his best friend growing up. "I wonder what all this could be about?" his dry voice breathed into the dial tone. I was confused.

My mother put on a pot of coffee.

"Hello?" my dad said. I could hear the distant voice of my eight year old cousin, Nathan, muffle through the receiver.

"Hello."

"Nathan, can I talk to your mum?"

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. I wondered if I just couldn't hear him.

"My mom is dead." His boyish voice was monotone.

It was my first experience with death and I was unsure of how to handle it. I am unsure how my dad dealt with his sadness. I am unsure how the lives of my cousins were affected. To this day, there are things that make me recall her, though I can't really recollect her face outside of photographs. I think of her when I smell asphalt, when I eat miracle whip, when someone is drinking warm Pepsi, and when I go to flea markets. These were some of my last sensory memories which included her, and they will always include her.

"Jesse," my boss calls me into her office, stacks of unread memos and books on pesticides, water quality, and bird censusing lay around the room in cluttered confusion, neon post-it notes sticking from between their pages like an angry fire. "I need you to go out on the drive and see if you can locate an injured Great Blue Heron by the three sister islands at the bend in the West Impoundment." I turn to leave, "and Jess," my boss calls after me, "bring that big net and . . ." she pauses, "and a garbage bag, just in case." The net served well if the bird was alive, the garbage bag was a bird's body bag. I hopped in the truck and started the engine.

I delighted in the fact that the drive was one way, so even if you just needed something a hundred feet in you had to go the full five miles. I took it all in, for the hundredth time, still amazed. I wished the truck's enormous FWS logo and the patch on my sleeve (which was hanging out the window, catching the wind) would disappear so that the tourists would have no excuse for flagging me down. The sky was blue, the water bluer, and the reflections of roseate spoonbills were caught in the folds of the waves. An Osprey bathed in the shallows, puffing out its feathers and causing the water droplets to burst into gem-light. I came to the bend and pulled over, searching for movement. I walked the shore of the West Impoundment twice before finding the body. It was long dead and its body lay stiff over the mangrove pneumataphores. His neck still held elegant curves. I traced the heron's body with my eye, wondering what caused his death. He looked so small, so delicate and fragile. How had he managed to look so large alive? He must have looked so proud and fierce hovering near the other birds, majestic and solitary, while they kept meekly to their flocks. I looked away and felt sacrilegious for staring so openly at his beautiful and broken body. Crouching down, I picked him up and felt those downy strong feathers find their way to the crevices of my fingers and tickle me with death. I felt the strong muscle of the wing and I felt its breast bone press into my thumb. It was so very warm, not from life, but from the sun. Turning him over, I saw that the other side of his head was beginning to decay. The smell of putrefying and sinister death overwhelmed me. I wanted to run and cry and tell my boss I couldn't find him. He was too proud, too noble too beautiful to be stuffed in that garbage bag. The fire ants ran out of his bubbling eye-socket. I wanted to curl up and vomit. Slowly I slid him into the bag as reverently as possible, trying to keep his wings from bending unnaturally.

The woman flags me down, my brown ranger uniform showing through my wind-shield. She explains to me that there is a turtle which was recently hit but still alive. I see it in the middle of the road, its shell cracked and the blood oozing out thick onto the pavement. It is on its back and it is helpless, perhaps hopeless. The woman leaves in a hurry, thinking she has placed it in good hands. I stand in shock before I find a plastic bag in my car that I quickly lay over the carpet of my trunk. I can feel the intricate geometry of its shell on my fingertips as I pick it up. I bring it to a local wildlife hospital where it is euthenized. Driving home, I can't help but wonder if people would drive more safely if they had felt the fantastic ridges of a turtle shell while the thriving being pulsed dully in fear under their palm.

The worst was, perhaps, a pelican on Wildlife Drive . It was a beautiful light and blotchy juvenile who looked perfectly fine as I drove up. I smiled to myself, hoping it would be alright and fly away as I approached it, a silly tourist's mistake. I got out of the truck and walked towards it. It hobbled strangely and turned. Then I saw it. I felt myself go faint. My stomach struggled to be released. Clutching myself, I leaned on the truck. I fumbled with the latch and grabbed the net.

I look at the bird. Its eyes are fierce but tired. Its wing is hanging from its body by only a tendon and it drags the dismembered wing with it into the brush as it tries to escape. The bones stick out at unnatural angles. White bone. Red blood. The wing catches. I cringe. It stops, gutturally flapping. Exhausted. I imagine its bones catching on the net, I can't do it. It gazes at me intensely, throwing open its gaping beak and snapping it down violently. It tries to strike me with cobra-like speed. The clap of its beak fills my mind.

I can't do it.

I root through the back of the truck. I find a towel I had brought to dry off after fish seining earlier that day. I had grabbed it rather sneakily, hoping for the softness of my mother's new Egyptian cotton towels, most likely against her will. I eyed it. I looked at the bird. As I brought the towel over I prayed to some god and this earth and this bird, please don't move, please don't catch your wing. I walked towards it. Its beak was as long as my forearm and hooked at the end. The hook was thrown over and over again towards my eyes. I feared this bird. My heart froze in animal-like terror. I threw the towel and missed. I eyed the pelican. I was afraid to grab it. It was so young, freshly fledged. I wondered who had hit it, what it had been doing, what they had been doing, what it had been thinking, what they had been thinking. I reached for the towel slowly. The pelican looked so tired. I tossed it again. I didn't miss and as I held the towel in place I could feel the strength of its body. I kept its head and wing covered and placed the net over it. I adjusted it and put it in the passenger's seat. I watched it struggle and wished it wouldn't waste its energy, all I could smell was blood. I ran up to the door of CROW and they came out and helped to bring it inside. They gave me a number and told me to call back in a couple of days. I called. The bird died.

I had looked into its eyes.

I threw away the towel. I can't stand the smell of blood.

A pelican chick, disturbed by our survey, wanders too far from its nest and falls with a crushing thud after a Great Egret pushes her beak through its throat, protecting her vulnerable nest. The sound of gurgling blood-breath as its eyes became lifeless.

Tens of thousands of dead and dying minnows for the sake of censusing and science.

A dead rice rat in a drift fence.

So many empty eyes and lifeless bodies. Far too many.

We skirt the mangrove fringe and walk at angles along the edge of the large Colusa Indian shell mound that rises from the center of Hemp Key, a beautiful island in the middle of Pine Island Sound. We turn the corner, and scramble over an enormous fallen Gumbo limbo whose deep orange bark peels off in sheets, appropriately filling its common name of tourist tree. On the other side, the guano rests in oozing sheets and puddles; we step through it, sinking into the liquid (made up of decaying birds, sand, water, mud, and yes, guano) over our knees. Our disturbance releases a salty thick smell that is overpowering but not necessarily bad. We remain calm and move slowly, occasionally we can pull enough debris in front of us to create snow-shoe-like bridge-shoes. We make our way around the point of the island and crawl back in on a sandy spot that holds up our bodies with more force. We crawl on all fours until we reach an opening. All this time one person reads out bird species and nest status to a data recorder, "Great Blue Heron: chick, White Ibis: egg, Cormorant: unknown." The data recorder tallies frantically, attempting to keep the gear from being sucked up by muck and water. This time it is my turn to count and ID the flushed birds and take photos of unknown chicks. I watch the air. I also have to make sure the crows and Magnificent Frigatebirds don't move in to take advantage of the vulnerable chicks. For now, the flushing is minimal. We come in to an open area and my boss gasps. There, directly in front of us, a Magnificent Frigatebird hangs in a perfect dive. It is a deep black that shines with moons and its discerning feature, a deep red inflated throat, is the only other color to grace the bird's dead body. It stands out like a scarlet letter, a sign that this bird is in its mating season. Its head is held elegantly and its wings are folded slightly into its body. It takes us several moments to realize that it is suspended in this position by almost invisible monofilament. The fishing line is wrapped around its body like a cocoon, caught on the branches above it and suspending it in this odd manner. The bird's body length is about half my height and its wing span would be far taller than a man. I am overwhelmed by the grace of its figure. Mary, who is data recorder today, wanders to an area directly to the right of this forever-falling black angel. I follow. There, dwarfed to insignificance by the blackness, is a freshly hatched egret chick. The egg still lies around it in the nest. It is a wet and panting thing that doesn't resemble its parents in many ways. Its skin is alien green and its feathers look more like an old woman's overly-styled hair than the angle-white beauty that will cover it as an adult. 

Life

But death is a part of life.

When cruising the ocean, which is cast in liquid sky and molten passion, I feel truly alive. My body is pelted with wake and the salt sticks and remains a part of me. I am baked into submission by the summer sun and I contemplate how lucky I am to be able to bask in Florida 's beauty and call it work. I watch as the cormorants and anhingas spread their wings to greet the breeze and warmth that will give them flight. Pelicans shoot downward in the likeness of a shooting star made of mousy feathers and gallant beaks. I try to keep my eyes from closing and my body from falling into the abyss of sleep as my stomach digests the salt-encrusted peanut butter and jelly I had eaten for lunch. I suck on watermelon and my sun-baked lips often forget to close, allowing the pink liquid to run and mix with the sweat coating my uniform. I am thrown back into reality as we hit an unexpected sandbar. We must have gotten off track. My boss curses and throws us into reverse. My head whips back and forth and I feel nauseous with confusion. My boss tells us to get off and push, which we do, with sea legs and baked brains.

That's when I see our destination in the distance. Bird Key. Then we are there, climbing over the gnarled branches of mangroves which invite and repel simultaneously. My first colonial nesting survey - I have just turned seventeen.

My first view.

A cormorant chick hangs its head out of its neck and squeaks impatiently for food.

A white ibis chick, black and unlike its parent, curls in a warm nest next to an unhatched sibling.

And then a large whitish egg with a crack.

I stop. I watch as the little hooked beak finds its way through the crack, pecking for life and all things beautiful. I watch as the white downy head emerges, wet with life, and slowly the ugly wrinkled body and wings. A fried chicken dipped in flour with an floppy-bottomed beak emerges.

It takes its first look around this startlingly colorful world and I am there.

A trek through the marshiest marsh, water to my waist, brings me to the place that the silver-glowing traps had been placed at the bases of sedges the night before. I open each one methodically. Most of them are empty, some of them have been set off but contain nothing, probably tampered with by the mischievous raccoons. I pick one up that has more weight and open it. There, cowering at the back, is a hefty hispid, baring his teeth. I open up the net bag and drop him in; careful to make sure he doesn't escape. I take him by the scruff of the neck and hold him upside down. I sex him, a male, and then perform a cruel torture. I pin down his little legs and, with a man's beard tripper, shave a patch on his belly so we will know if we catch him again. He squirms and bites. I set him in the sedge and say goodbye. He glares and swims off.

After many more empty traps I come across one floating in the water. I pick it up, assuming it is empty, but I feel a change in the distribution of weight in my hand. I open it. Inside is a wet and shivering Sanibel Rice Rat, a smaller and cuter creature than the one I had just handled. I pull it out by its scruff. Its body is cold and wet. Its hair is matted and the oatmeal the traps were baited with floats uneaten around it. I attempt to dry it, untucking my pleated shirt and using the ends to scrub it dry. It doesn't struggle much against my persistent pokes and rubs. I run to the sun where I dry it more thoroughly and place it on a warmed stump. I keep sinking and slurping through the muck.

I place my hands around it, take my warmth, I plead, I am so sorry, take my warmth. I hold it tightly, first against my hands, then my belly. I place it to my breasts. Be warm. Take my warmth. I plead with it. The air is still and cold and my breath forms a fog that hangs gloomily over me. It begins to make small movements. A twitch, a turn. Bit by bit it becomes rowdy enough that I am afraid to hold it. I set it on the stump where it sits for a moment before taking off and shooting into the marsh. It never thanked me or looked back, and shouldn't have. I saved it from nothing but myself.

Tracks of Joy

I feel rhythmic and aware. I feel open and yet unafraid. I feel warmth and shadow. I feel wind and ocean. I feel like, with enough concentration, I could cause the pulse of my watch band to become in sync with the pulsing of the waves. The t-shirt against my back is taut and I feel an insatiable desire to be entirely nude and lay myself out on this sand bar as an offering to an unknown diety. I have an urge to lay with part of my body in the ocean and part of my body in the sun and feel the waves wash over me, entirely unaware that I am not the patterned sand. The sand is alive. Or perhaps it is not alive but is rather a representation of things living. Mounds protrude into the light, miniature volcanoes spurting digested sand and casting mini-shadows. My own shadows mix with theirs and my hair plays like spider webs in the sanctuary puddles. Indentations, perhaps creating by foraging beaks, hold pools of invisible water which holds, along with infinite beings, small mollusks. The tide creeps as I write. I pray for it to overtake me. The foot prints of birds crisscross in geometrical modern madness, temporary modern art that will last only as long as the tide desires. A fickle artist. Larger waves begin to overtake my body. The cold water creeps into me, over my legs, my buttocks, my feet. The creatures creep in about me, gliding, exploring, suckling intimately as the wrinkles of my toes. They leave trials that weave delicately, adding curves to the insane angles. Guano stains the sand, brown on white on tan, mounds of spattered acrylic paint. It all represents something.

A mollusk explores the shadows of my hair. The waves are invisible but their shadows are not and the sunlight is not and the joining of sand and shadow and light create illusions and reflections, the traveling of ground and the distortion of sand an the dance of art continues.

My Return

My little red car shudders on the highway, it can't go over sixty-five. I press my pedal to the metal and it shakes and vibrates. I let off. I want to go home. I want to bask in my woods. I want to bask in my family's smiles. Finally I exit the highway. As I travel I suddenly realize how built up my home has become. The sky hangs in thick purple folds; the intersections of my youth are unrecognizable.

Somehow, for some reason, I held onto any shred of hope that Sanibel might be different. But when I first glimpse her floating over hazy water and sky I gasp. The water is brownish black, a hint of purple reflects from the smog. Cranes and barges grind in mechanical inharmoniousness. An enormous bridge is being built, touching the sky and carrying people far away from the water and the birds and the dolphins. I loved this old bridge, this joiner of human and natural. I always had, even as a child. It led to shelter from the pandemonium of human disturbance. My eyes well up and I want to forget to turn, throw myself into the water which heaves in death throws. Somehow the large bridge would not feel like the gap from human to natural, but human to human. They were moving into my Sanibel. How would people find nature without a track to bring them there? I am deeply disturbed and the solutions won't come to mind as I swim through noise, smog and lack of birds.

I arrive at home, a sanctuary from chaos still.

I push my face into my mother's shoulder, I attempt to explain. She knows, she whispers, she knows. I want to burrow into her voice and pretend it's not out there.

But Pine Island Sound is dying. I know its dying; they all know its dying.

Brackish water so diluted by Lake Okeechobee that entire ecosystems are thrown off and the algae begins to take over. There is an enormous decline in sea grass cover; the fish are getting lesions, there is death washing up on beaches.

I lay with my back against the trunk of an aging buttonwood. I press my eyes into my knees, forcing back my selfish sobs. What if the Sound really does die? Why can't everyone work together? Why can't they just understand ? Petitions, suing, politics, hatred. It's so hard to believe we'll ever make a difference with these weapons. I watch a gopher tortoise rip at the drying winter grass. Just one of these scenes experienced could change a life. This estuary holds millions of these scenes, so many opportunities to understand. If the sound dies, if the estuary dies, these moments and experiences will go with her. I will go with her. My life has been Florida . Of course, lives will come after. But who, then, will I be without the egrets and cabbage palms and the smell of mud?

Bridge

I had never really written with intent before this point. But the more I wrote, the more I found tracks appearing with increasing significance. Perhaps this was because I began to see myself, my writing, as a track. So, when I felt myself within a deep reverie, I began walking.

Running.

First through fire break, looking.

Then finding. The prints of raccoons and bobcats and armadillos and coyotes and boar. I followed, at first unsure, and then very sure, this beaten track that wound and split and went deeper into the gut of this immense and inspiring reserve. I stood in the hollow, beautifully aware. And I was happy and new, I just knew. Something.

I don't know something concrete. It is not an understanding that is shareable. What I do know is long as I can go back to these tracks, any tracks, following them to somewhere deep in the earth I know I can have brief moments of some understanding that makes me complete and so aware that I feel I know something beyond knowing. And I want to bring people with me. Or persuade them into motion on their own. So they can understand. Be whole. Be free.

Bringing this feeling to life in the soul of just one person who had forgotten their existence in the womb of something natural would make it complete.

Can I?

Sitting close together in the crisp morning, the dew settling around us harmlessly as the fire crackled, I was told of the powers of a shaman. A shaman has the ability to transform, to blend and move between human and natural worlds. As these gifts are explained something sparks - something in my world had already brought the human and natural worlds together. Then it came to me: the bridge. As this remembrance surfaced I was told that my dreams speak of shamanism, that perhaps this ability of shifting between worlds lies dormant within me. I can't help but be cynical, it is in my nature and the nature of my family. But somehow cynicism and questioning sink beneath a more important concept - how to save the last remaining wild places.

The thing I couldn't think as my mind swam in turmoil now came to me. I didn't know, then, what would happen when a monstrosity of a bridge brought human to human and there were no tracks to bring people back to the earth.

But what if I and others like me become bridges? Can bridges heal the broken bond?

Am I strong enough to open up my world, allow myself to be traveled and used as a bridge? Allow people to use my words to find their own?

Am I willing to make myself vulnerable if it has a chance of healing?

I am if someone forgot their connectedness and I could return it. If I could bridge the gap they were unable to bridge alone.

A bridge to where?

What if I simply admit: I have no answers for anyone, only a way to find their own. I am not the ground on the other side of the bridge, I am only the bridge. The bridge to something natural.

Jessica Wheeler is currently a first-year student at New College of Florida where she plans to major in Environmental Science. She has lived on Sanibel Island for thirteen years. At present she is a Biological Aide at J.N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge where she has worked since 2003. Her desire is to protect and raise awareness of Florida 's remaining wild places through education, research and writing.

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